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An Atlanta Editorial Voice May Move to the Right

In the 1950s and ’60s, under Ralph McGill, The Atlanta Constitution infuriated conservative white readers with its liberal views, especially on segregation.

Cynthia Tucker, the editorial page editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, has been heir to that tradition, provoking anger with strongly worded positions to the left of the region’s popular opinion, like attacking the case for war against Iraq. She has also criticized figures revered on the left, and in Atlanta in particular, like the heirs of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

But last week, the newspaper announced that Ms. Tucker would move to Washington, continuing to write her Pulitzer Prize-winning column, but not working on editorials and not setting the paper’s official stance on issues. In fact, most of the editorial board will be replaced in May, a move that could create a different — and perhaps less liberal — voice for one of the country’s leading regional papers.

Ms. Tucker and three others will leave the board, but will continue to write their columns. The paper’s editor, Julia Wallace; the senior managing editor, James Mallory; and the publisher, Doug Franklin, will join the editorial board, a role they did not play before. Andre Jackson, who joined the board last year, will become the editorial editor. In addition, the paper recently hired two conservative columnists.

Ms. Wallace said she expected the board to continue in the direction set in the last year or so, publishing fewer editorials, and avoiding hot-button ideological issues.

“We have moved to a different kind of editorial that’s much more about community issues and less about, ‘let me opine on national issues,’ ” she said.

The new board members have not made their political views public. Asked about her own, Ms. Wallace said, “I want to be about making Atlanta a better place.”

Mr. Jackson, who Ms. Wallace said would write the editorials, was quoted last year in The Journal-Constitution as saying, “I’d classify myself as center-right on fiscal and economic issues and a centrist to slightly center-left on many, but not all, social matters.”

To some longtime readers inside and outside the paper, the changes add up to a stance that will be more conservative over all, and more averse to controversy.

Photo

From top to bottom: Cynthia Tucker, who will keep her column but no longer serve as editorial page editor of The Journal-Constitution; Julia Wallace, the papers editor, who is joining the editorial board; Doug Franklin, the publisher, who is also joining the board; and Andre Jackson, who will write editorials.Credit
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“I think they’re trying not to offend,” said Kenneth Edelstein, a blogger and former editor of Creative Loafing, an Atlanta alternative weekly. “It’s definitely a move to the right, and it’s a real change for a paper that was the most important progressive voice in the South for a long time.”

Viewed historically, the last few years were an anomaly, with a single major editorial voice in town. Atlanta had two papers, the more liberal Constitution and the more conservative Journal, until their parent company, Cox Enterprises, merged them in 2002.

Some Journal-Constitution editors said that what concerned them was not the political stance, but the fact that the top editors and the publisher would be on the board. Those editors insisted on anonymity, for fear of angering their bosses.

At most major American newspapers, the newsroom, the editorial page and the business operations are run separately. In theory, that arrangement helps keep news and editorials free from adverse influences.

“If the business side is involved, there’s a concern that advertisers or politicians will influence,” said Kelly McBride, ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists in St. Petersburg, Fla. And without separate news and editorial management, she said, “it will be harder to maintain the perception that news coverage is independent of the official stance.”

The new arrangement “is not very unusual, but it’s more typical of a paper in a smaller market,” she added.

Ms. Wallace said that at a time of severe cutbacks — her news staff was recently cut by 30 percent — “this is not the biggest thing newspapers have to worry about.” She also said the new editorial board would challenge powerful interests.

For Ms. Tucker, the move to Washington could raise her already-high national prominence. She has written editorials for 17 years, at The Constitution and then at The Journal-Constitution.

“I have been contemplating a move to Washington off and on for seven or eight years now,” she said. With a new administration taking office, and knowing “that my staff would be shrinking,” she said, the timing seemed right.

She said she did not know what the new editorial board would be like, “but editorial pages ought to draw controversy.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on page B4 of the New York edition with the headline: Editorial Voice of an Influential Atlanta Newspaper May Move to the Right. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe